You almost have to feel sorry for beef jerky. In a world of “private reserve” filet mignon and $120 Kobe steaks, beef jerky can’t help but look like a poor country relation. It doesn’t help that it gets sold alongside Fritos and transmission fluid at gas stations.

Recently, however, beef jerky has earned a shred of respectability. In Texas, where all things beef find their meaning, researchers have been applying actual science to make better jerky at the E.M. “Manny” Rosenthal Meat Science & Technology Center, at Texas A&M University. The resulting Aggie jerky is apparently a breakthrough. As the Web site www.thrillist.com put it, it’s “a Unified Theory of Meat available by the 1/2-pound bag.”

Unlike the standard truck-stop variety, the A&M jerky is pulled off the muscle, not ground up and reconstituted. Like most jerky, it’s from a lean cut – top round – because the fat that gives a buttery richness to cooked meats makes dried meat too tough. Sliced with the grain for a good chew, it is then marinated in a salty brine for a week before being peppered and smoked for three days with hickory sawdust smoke.

The drying process takes another 12 days. That’s an eternity considering that commercial drying ovens, with their fans and exhaust pipes, can turn out jerky flavored by “liquid smoke,” an additive, in several hours.

It’s all part of the Rosenthal center’s aim to improve the meat-eating experience. Ray Riley, who manages its lab, said, “We could make it faster and dirtier, but I don’t think we could make it any better.”

Aggie jerky is one advance in what has been a dubious segment of the beef trade. Jerky has devolved in recent years into “a way to market undesirable meat doctored up with artificial flavors,” said Bill Niman of Niman Ranch, who said his company’s naturally raised beef has been used by several “boutique jerky purveyors.”

There is clearly a jerky renaissance under way. At Cafe Rouge in Berkeley, Executive Chef Marsha McBride is making jerky from slices of Niman Ranch chuck and beef bottom round, and from meat off carcasses from Chez Panisse. McBride seasons her meat with brown sugar and cayenne, dries it for four hours, and serves it at the bar on butcher paper. “It’s perfect with Scotch and martinis,” she said.

Across the bay at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, Taylor Boetticher, co-owner of the Fatted Calf, an artisanal charcuterie, sells paper cones of jerky (at $25 a pound) made from organic grass-fed Marin Sun Farms bottom round that has been cut against the grain in long slices. Smoked over cherry and mesquite wood and dried in a convection oven, it gets its flavors from organic blackstrap molasses, Jim Beam bourbon, and salt and pepper.

At the Westbank Grill, a restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyo., the executive sous-chef, Laurent Mechin, has wrapped seared scaloppine of foie gras in buffalo jerky that he smokes and dries using a kitchen dehydrator.

“Jerky is a perfect meat product nobody gives much credit,” Mechin said. “It’s low in cholesterol, high in protein, has zero fat and is extremely flavorful. Aside from the salt, nothing is bad for you.”

Beef jerky sales have surged in recent years. Driven in part by the popularity of the Atkins Diet, retail sales of meat snacks such as jerky and beef sticks more than quadrupled from 1995 to 2006, to $2.7 billion annually, according to information supplied by the Snack Food Association, a trade group.

But beef jerky is hardly faddish. Its origins date to at least the Incas, who salted and dried strips of leftover meat, and the word “jerky” itself is derived from the Quechua word “charqui.”

Jerky connoisseurs find their bliss online at jerky emporiums like http://smokedmeats.com, www.robertsonshams.com and http://garywest.com. The jerky sampler packs from this last producer come with gold-foil, vacuum-sealed packages that include Cajun-style certified Angus beef strips and hickory-smoked buffalo jerky. The meats – long strips of rump roast – are cut against the grain to make them tender rather than leathery. The flavor intensifies after the jerky is warmed in the oven at 200 degrees for three minutes to make it “smokehouse fresh,” per the package instructions.

Higher on the nobility scale is the grass-fed, nitrite-free Highland Beef jerky from Long Meadow Ranch in the Napa Valley, available from http://longmeadowranch.com. Its latest variety is marinated in Longmeadow Vineyard cabernet sauvignon, garlic powder, pepper and other natural flavors. The only added ingredients come from the picture of jerky heaven that the owner, Ted Hall, paints for customers.

“We go on our cattle roundups on big coastal leases near Humboldt Bay,” said Hall, who recommended grating his cabernet jerky over deviled quail eggs and spinach salad. “Late in the afternoon, we’ll sit on a ridge looking out to the Pacific with some fresh fruit, eating jerky and telling stories. Those are perfect moments.”

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